French mobile gaming giant Voodoo accused Belarusian SayGames of copying a mobile game — and lost again

On October 7, 2026, the Paris Court of Appeal fully upheld the first-instance court's decision in the dispute between the French company Voodoo and the SayGames group, founded by Belarusian Yahor Vaikhanski.

On November 4, 2020, Voodoo released the strategy game City Takeover in the App Store, where players capture opponent's buildings. In April 2021, the French company registered a number of designs protecting the game in the EU.

Павялічыць

Павялічыць

In August 2021, the game Tower War — Tactical Conquest was released. It was developed by Vaveda studio, and the exclusive license for it belongs to Cypriot SayGames LTD. Voodoo considered it a copy of City Takeover. The French company demanded the game be removed from sale worldwide and filed a lawsuit — against Cypriot SayGames LTD and against the group's Belarusian company, registered in Minsk.

Voodoo requested:

• to recover 3.16 million euros in compensation for design rights infringement and 100 thousand euros for moral damages;
• alternatively, 952 thousand and 300 thousand euros for unfair competition;
• to ban Tower War in the EU under a penalty of 10 thousand euros for each day;
• to oblige SayGames to release a game update that would block the possibility of playing it, and to display the text of the court decision to players within it.

The court agreed that both games feature volumetric buildings with numbers on the roof, colored lines between them, and small people walking along these lines. But, according to the judges, these are common features of the entire "connect and capture" genre.

An experienced player, the court wrote, pays attention even to minor differences. And they exist: in Voodoo, the field is yellow, in SayGames, it's green. Instead of gray walls, there are rows of trees. Voodoo's characters have plush bear heads, while SayGames features soldiers in blue helmets.

The court also noted that the number of City Takeover downloads dropped sharply even before the release of Tower War.

SayGames, in turn, accused Voodoo of copying five of its advertising videos and demanded 340 thousand euros.

The court found that Voodoo had indeed taken the videos "identically" and did not dispute this. The French company explained the incident as an error by the advertising platform, which was quickly corrected. The court accepted this explanation, saw no intentionality, and also dismissed the counterclaim.

Voodoo must pay SayGames LTD 30,000 euros in legal costs for the appeal, in addition to the 15,000 euros awarded in June 2024.

What is SayGames

SayGames was founded in Minsk in 2017 by Yahor Vaikhanski and Andrei Sokol. Vaikhanski graduated from BSU, worked as a designer for foreign companies for several years, and in 2011 created an English language school for IT specialists, IT English. He is now the CEO of SayGames, and Dzianis Vaikhanski serves as the COO.

The company does not develop games itself. It finds independent studios, finances them, and publishes their projects. SayGames' hits include My Perfect Hotel, DOP (Draw One Part), My Little Universe, and the aforementioned Tower War.

According to the company, its games have been downloaded over 8 billion times, and it has over 140 million active users. SayGames consistently ranks among the top five largest mobile publishers in the world by the number of downloads. In July 2022 alone, it earned about $3 million in the App Store and Google Play.

Cypriot SayGames LTD was established in 2020. Now its main office is located in Cyprus, and the core team works in Poland. The group's Polish company had about $6.4 million in revenue in 2023. In total, SayGames has about 250 employees; Belarus is no longer mentioned on its website.

According to the French court, the group's Belarusian company, founded in 2018, ceased operations on November 9, 2022, after liquidation. Another Minsk entity, the HTP resident "Kazhyhulni" (SayGames), was included in the list of companies with shareholders from "unfriendly countries" in January 2023. In June 2024, the owner began its liquidation.

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